[RIGA IN THE CHIMNEY.]
HOW did Riga get into the chimney?
Well, if the truth must be told, it was not merely a chimney, but the window; and not a window only, but the front door; and not only the front door, but the staircase. It was, in fact, so much of all four, that it was but slightly like any one of them. Things were altogether upside-down in this house. Instead of being built on the ground like all reasonable houses, it was under it; and although it had but one place to come in at, and but one fire to cook at, so many people lived inside of it in tents of their own that it was in reality a village; and yet again, it was a village where you had only to lift the skin wall of your one-roomed dwelling to get into your neighbor’s.
The land was Kamschatka, and Riga was a small boy of that cold country. He had been outside to get some milk from the deer, and had come to the hole that formed the entrance, and taken the first step down on the notched pole that was to land him in the fire if he didn’t take a good leap over when he got to the bottom.
It was already dark. Above him one of the dogs—there were twenty or thirty in all—got a smell of the milk, or a smell of a pot on the fire; and as he sniffed greedily through chimney (we might as well call it that), he lost his balance and came tumbling head and heels over Riga with a prodigious racket and howling into the village below. Riga, who was fat, thought he was going too; but he clung to the notched pole till he had his senses again, and then he clung the tighter because of something else.
At the foot of the pole burned a fire of moss which gave much heat, little light, and more smoke than anything else; this smoke hung duskily around the chimney, and went out lazily as it happened to feel inclined. Riga’s entrance had been covered by the dog’s fall, the smoke and dust hid him effectually, and something stopped him from coming down. It was a little whisper which, although addressed to a person close by the whisperer’s side, scaled the pole for the benefit of Riga’s curious ears.
“Hush! some one came in.”
“You are mistaken, for no one comes down.”